Left this on a cliffhanger, so here’s the story.
On Sunday, since Fargo’s crate was among the things being moved from the duplex to the new apartment, Fargo just came with us when we made the drive over. The movers, God bless them, were friendly to her and worked around her when we neglected to get her fully out of the way. Fargo, God bless her, was anxious about it all but handled the situation with as much grace as you could ask a one-year-old dog hyped up on steroids to display (steroid backstory: it’s prescribed, we’re not trying to make our dog hit home runs, but we would welcome that as a side effect).
The way this ended up transpiring here, at the apartment, was that as the movers brought everything up from the truck, one of us usually had Fargo on her leash, just kind of walking her through the place. Between big trips, though, there’d be a break while they loaded up the freight elevator, so we’d close the door and unclip her.
Fargo, again because of the steroids, has been drinking a lot of water, and she managed to do this back at the duplex even as strangers carried out every object she knew and held dear and put it in an unfamiliar truck (while giving her a few scritches, of course). Normally hesitant to pee anywhere but her old backyard, the pup has been getting cavalier about where she tinkles. And at one point (two points, actually, but the first is when the clogging happened), she went on the floor. Looked my wife in the eye, squatted, and made the biggest electrolyte-filled puddle this side of Salt Lake City right there in the middle of the office.
We’d been prepared for bathroom needs, but only for our own, meaning we had toilet paper available but no paper towels.
Cleaning up the piss required a lot of toilet paper.
I, not really considering the long game, got it cleaned up, put the TP in the toilet, and said, “Oh shit. This is going to clog.” By that point, though, my options were either to reach in the toilet and pull some out or to flush. If it clogged, I’d have to reach in the toilet and pull some out, so I took the option with upside. I flushed, and when it clogged and I said, “Oh shit. It clogged,” and my wife said, “No, it did that for me too, you just need to hold it down longer,” so I waited for the tank to fill and then flushed again and this time held it down long enough for the whole bowl to fill up, my fate was sealed.
We put the leash back on Fargo.
We walked her out of the room so she wouldn’t be able to mock the male.
I took off my fitbit and my wedding ring (really felt like a grown-up, taking my wedding ring off to reach into something gross), reached into the depths of the toilet, grabbed the outer half of the massive wad of TP, and tore it off, holding it dripping and disintegrating in my hand while the pipe slowly-then-quickly sucked everything out of the bowl. (Toilets are amazing this way—they just gobble everything right up once you unclog them. I’m always worried I’m going to have to flush again and it’ll overflow but nope, down go the contents of the bowl once the clog’s removed. One of nature’s miracles, that.)
Then, I dropped the half-wad back in the toilet, flushed it to get rid of it, washed my hands, and we went on our way.
So, not really that exciting. Fargo hasn’t learned to take her dumps in the toilet, for example. But she did technically clog it, just like she technically broke the washing machine that one time (“Yeah, bitch! Yeah, motherfucker!”), and she did make me reach into a toilet, which I like to think she took great humor in. Perhaps she thinks we, humans, don’t spend enough time sniffing our loos, and wanted to make me get up close and personal. Kind of thoughtful of her, if that was the case.
She’s peeing on the balcony now, for the most part, which is what we want. We got a little grass pad out there (more on that in the next blog post, titled Grievances), she doesn’t love it, but she’s growing to tolerate it and that’s the first step towards us being free from taking her all the way down the elevator and out back every time she needs to empty the tanks. She only peed on the floor twice, which isn’t too bad, honestly, and since the floors are laminate it was easy to clean up, especially after we finally unpacked the dog piss cleaning spray. Also, fairly clean toilet, relative to most toilets, since we were moving in and all.
Could’ve been worse.
